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Film info

Film summary

The story of a race between two teams of scientists in the 1950s - Francis Crick and James Watson, Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins - desperate to be the first to unlock the molecular structure of DNA.

Key facts

The discovery of DNA structure was pioneered by four scientists: Maurice Wilkins, Rosalind Franklin, Francis Crick and James Watson.

Wilkins and Franklin used X-ray images to reveal evidence of a helical structure in the DNA molecule.

Crick and Watson instead built models of how they imagined DNA to look - like a cross or helix.

In 1962 Crick, Watson and Wilkins shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovery of the DNA double helix.

Transcript

In the early 1950s, the quest to solve the mystery of the structure of DNA became a race, riddled with rivalry and failed partnerships.

Embarking on this race were two teams: Francis Crick, a physicist, and James Watson, a geneticist of Cambridge University; and Maurice Wilkins, a former nuclear physicist, ...